during a boom, overly optimistic and off-base notions can dominate the scene. eventually, wackier and wackier ideas persist in some unreal "the emperor has no clothes" world. we saw this happen during the dot-com rollup, when some of the dumbest ideas in history were praised by people who should have known better. does the dot-com collapse mean we should lose all hope and suddenly foresee a gloomy future? of course not. optimism just needs to be rekindled. but how?

enter the irobot roombaa robot vacuum cleaner. when this device was first introduced, i was skeptical. i thought it was another false start in the never-ending, weird hope that within our lifetime, we could actually make a robot that could potentially turn on us humans and kill us. mankind will have accomplished something when that day comes. not every accomplishment is positive in the scheme of things, but most of us read isaac asimov's novel i, robot when we were kids. and we all want those crazy robot laws to be implemented. you know, like the law that says "a robot may not injure a human being."

apparently, though, we have yet to make a robot that can even stand up straight. so the holy grail of first-generation personal robotics, to me, has always been the vacuum-cleaning robot. then along came the roomba.

from what i can tell, this device is little more than a mechanical rug sweeper that can't even recharge itself. it's laughable that the company would choose the corporate name irobot, mocking the asimov novel. and there is something familiar about this robot. during the short-lived era of the androbot, a crackpot robot scheme from nolan bushnell's company back in the 1980s, we saw a robot that could fetch a beer for the chair-bound slob. it was displayed at a big trade show, and everyone predicted that the year of the robot was upon us. it wasn't.

perhaps if we had put a little more effort into robot technology back then, something good might have happened. we don't have much now, unless the combination of a computer and printer is a robotic typist. also, of course, there is the sony aibo, an expensive robot petan amusement serving no real purpose. the idea of robots was that they were going to be our slaves, not our clowns.

the little sweeper appears to be the best we can do. at $200, it's not cheap, especially when you consider the economy right now. and it has to compete with a real vacuum cleaner, which actually sucks out dirtand with an inexpensive, old-fashioned carpet sweeper, which can do the job a lot faster.

in any case, the roomba represents the optimism of the tech sector. this in itself may be more important than the device's usefulness. the technology scene has always been flooded with products that can only be described as "neat." that's the total appeal; the reason you own them is to show how cool you are. you notice this when you browse the web on a danger research phone: people want to check it out, and they think you're cool for having one.

steve jobs has made himself into an icon just by exploiting the sizzle of the business with the jazzy designs of the macintosh. the cool factor has made a difference. and notice how it is always combined with optimism and a rosy vision of the future. but raw, unbridled optimism during the dot-com boom led to insanity. flooz? beenz? i mean, really! but when the insanity was cured by a dose of reality, optimism waned too. finding out that too many rich executives are also crooked hasn't helped things.

the tech boom reminds me of an old "star trek" episode, "spock's brain." spock had his brain removed, and it was used as a cpu to run the infrastructure of a planet apparently populated by female flight attendants. (they don't write them the way they used to!) to reinstall the brain in spock's head, dr. mccoy had to don a helmet that turned him into a mega-genius. afterward, his outlook on everything changed. he saw the brain transplant as trivial. "even a child could do it" was the tag line. eventually, though, dr. mccoy lost his newfound brainpower and was reduced to a quivering wreck. his optimism went from high to nonexistent in a matter of moments. that's what happened with high tech.

perhaps the roomba and other "neat" devices will re-introduce optimism. the world is more fun with a lot of cool gizmos and high hopes for a bright future.

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About the Author

John C. Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the co-host of the twice weekly podcast, the No Agenda Show. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, PC/Computing, Computer Shopper, MacUser, Barrons, the DEC Professional as well as other newspapers and magazines. Former editor and consulting editor for InfoWorld, he... See Full Bio

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